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EMC China chief 'to quit' in email fiasco

Heads roll after boss is compared to Genghis Khan

The EMC incident has underlined the dangers of private emails becoming public

A minor dispute over a misplaced key which blew up into a public relations
fiasco has reportedly ended with the resignation of the president of
$10bn-a-year multinational tech company EMC's
Chinese division.

The incident has underlined the dangers of private emails becoming public,
and drawn attention to the cultural disconnect between foreign managers and
local staff in China.

EMC declined to confirm or deny details of the case when contacted by
vnunet.com.

According to Chinese media reports, the incident started when
Loke
Soon Choo, president of EMC China, returned to his office late one Friday
evening in April to find himself locked out.

The Singaporean executive fired off a curt email to his secretary, who had
already left the office.

"You locked me out of my office this evening because you assume I have my
office key on my person. With immediate effect, you do not leave the office
until you have checked with all the managers you support," Loke wrote, according
to copies of the emails seen by
vnunet.com.

The secretary, Rebecca Hu, emailed a blistering reply. "I locked the door
because the office has been burgled in the past. Even though I'm your
subordinate, please pay attention to politeness when you speak. This is the most
basic human courtesy. You have your own keys. You forgot to bring them, but you
still want to say it's someone else's fault," she wrote.

Hu copied her reply, along with Loke's original email, to all of EMC's staff
in China. Someone copied the email to a friend outside the company, and during
the next couple of weeks the email exchange was forwarded around other companies
in China, apparently reaching thousands of people, some of whom posted it on
online
forums.

It became a cause of heated online debate, with some supporting Hu, but
others accusing the secretary of being stubborn, irresponsible and
unprofessional. Some of the attacks on EMC have nationalist overtones, as the
firm, and Loke, are foreigners.

"Foreigners come to China to lord it over others, not to help China's
economic development," said one forum participant. "They want to keep down our
wages and give the profits to foreign executives and their headquarters."

Another pointed out that the boss had made the error of cc-ing several other
staff on his original email to the secretary, thus turning a private reprimand
into a public humiliation.